In Mali's poorest villages, building a house can be a costly venture. It often involves cutting already depleted forests for wood and saving enough money to have corrugated sheetmetal shipped in for a roof.

Tripoli -
Leaders of several African countries are calling on the West to intervene in Libya in order to stop instability from spreading across the Sahel and threatening fragile governments in the region.

Paris -
Beaten, bound and fed mostly dry bread, on the darkest days of his three years held captive by Islamists in the Sahel, Frenchman Serge Lazarevic felt he was no longer human."There was no time, there were no bearings.

Bamako -
Mali admitted Friday that prisoners had been freed in exchange for French hostage Serge Lazarevic, confirming information given to AFP earlier this week by a security source in the west African country.

Paris -
France's last remaining hostage, Serge Lazarevic, arrived home Wednesday after three years at the hands of Islamist militants, to be greeted by his family and French President Francois Hollande.

Malian Health Minister Ousmane Kone spoke on state television on Thursday, confirming the country's first case of Ebola. The victim is a two-year-old child who tested positive for the virus after returning from Guinea.

Bamako -
Investigators probing the crash of an Air Algerie flight in Mali that killed 116 people in July said on Saturday there was no obvious lead yet and all possibilities, including terrorism, were being explored.

Le Bourget -
Investigators probing the crash of an Air Algerie flight in Mali that killed 116 people last month said on Thursday they had been unable to access voice recordings from the flight deck."The tape was a little bit damaged. We were able to extract it...

Paris -
France said Monday the pilots of the Air Algerie passenger plane that crashed in Mali, killing all 118 people on board, had asked to turn back in a new development to a complex probe into the tragedy.

Bamako -
The second black box from the Air Algerie plane disaster was recovered Saturday at the remote crash site in northern Mali as investigators headed to the scene to determine the cause of the tragedy.